Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Brian Mason is finding that it’s more difficult to publish a capital projects sunshine list than he first thought.

The minister promised to bolster transparency and government accountability by posting a prioritized list of the NDP’s infrastructure projects this fall, but now says the list he plans to post on his ministry website may not be ranked in order of priority after all.

“It may not be,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t want to prejudge anything, other than to say that we’re very much working on this and we want to provide as much transparency as possible.”

Mason said he is worried that ranking projects in a specific order may spark a competition between municipalities over their placement on the list.

“I think that would be very unhealthy,” he said. “At the same time we want to make sure people know what kind of projects are being considered (and) how those decisions will be made.”

He told a legislature committee examining the infrastructure budget last week that he wants to produce the document before Christmas.

Mason said it will be provided after the budget is passed, “and when we’re comfortable that it’s something that’s useful for the public and it provides accurate information.”

“What you don’t want to have is huge, massive lobbying by different communities competing with each other,” he told the committee. “This is a real risk. You know, I’m number 2, you’re number 1, and somebody else is number 3, and all these communities then exerting massive efforts to get their hospital, to get their school, and so on. That’s a real challenge for us.”

He said he now recognizes there has to be some flexibility in the rankings, as well as an opportunity for communities to provide input.

“You don’t want to reduce it to just some kind of program where you punch in a bunch of numbers and it spits out a list and you can never change it,” he said.

Mason said he liked the concept of the list because he thought it would take the politics out of the process to ensure “the politicians aren’t playing games.”

He and his party have criticized the previous Tory government of timing capital projects for political gain, noting the Jim Prentice regime announced school construction and expansion projects before and during the last provincial election and last year’s byelections.

But ranking projects is a complex matter, Mason conceded.

“I have to say that coming up with the sunshine list has been much more difficult than I thought it was,” he told MLAs at the standing committee on Alberta’s economic future.

Wildrose critic Dave Schneider, MLA for Little Bow, said Tuesday that Wildrose has been calling for a ranked list for three years.

“All the things the minister said made sense, but at the end of the day, if it is prioritized and criteria based and transparent, I think Albertans would rather see that list than no list at all,” he said.

“I think the NDP is realizing that governing is a lot harder than they thought it would be,” he said.

Bhullar said it’s very important the public knows what is being constructed, the cost of the project, as well as the project’s progress so people can plan accordingly. But school boards may change their priorities on which school is required first, and that affects the provincial rankings.

He urged the NDP to resurrect a website his government had developed that listed capital projects, progress updates, estimated times for completion, and reasons for delays if a project was running behind schedule.

“That’s a really important tool,” he said. “I was very disappointed the government took it down.”

Liberal Leader David Swann and Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark both pressed the government to produce the promised ranked list of projects.

“It’s clear the government does have priorities,” Swann said. “It’s just a question of them letting us know what they are. It would be in the public interest and obviously better politics to make it clear how they’re making decisions on different infrastructure needs.”

Clark said the list is “badly needed.”

“I am not surprised it’s taking them longer because it’s a big task,” he said. “But transparency is really important.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.